Ed note: Shakespeare’s 73 sonnet speaks of anticipating loss: “This thou perceivist which makes thy love more strong; To love that well which thou must leave ere long.” Grief surrounds us as we near life’s end. How do we deal with the inevitable? Our Health Care Committee and Caring Committee are working with our Chaplain to find ways toward healing and resilience. Listening to podcasts by Anderson Cooper is one of many ways to get us moving in a productive direction. Please give your thoughts to Helen and those committees.
Over the eight episodes of “All There Is,” the CNN anchor digs into his own family traumas as well as those of others. Listen here: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/all-there-is-with-anderson-cooper
By Robin Pogrebin in the NYT
Anderson Cooper has never been a big crier.
In fact, he has been a model of cool when covering world conflicts and natural disasters as a CNN anchor and “60 Minutes” correspondent. In person, he can come across as removed, dispassionate, unflappable.
But undertaking a podcast about grief and loss opened up something in him, providing access to a deep and formative pain that also enabled him to connect with the anguish of others.
“What has struck me is the degree to which I had not dealt with this stuff at all,” said Cooper, 55, at a recent interview in his West Village townhouse. “I mean, the fact that my voice wavers even now …”
That “stuff” includes losing his father, Wyatt Cooper, to illness when he was 10; losing his older brother, Carter Cooper, to suicide when he was 21; and losing his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, when he was 52.
He hadn’t planned on making a podcast. But while recently sorting through the boxes of his mother’s belongings, Cooper found himself unsure of what to do with all the strong feelings. So he started documenting them. Knowing that his father had died at 50, Cooper liked the idea of leaving behind a record for his two young boys — Wyatt, 2, and Sebastian, 9 months.
“When I get overwhelmed — when things are extremely dangerous around me or chaotic — I narrate myself through them from a slight distance,” Cooper said.
But this time, he added, “rather than narrate in my head, I just started recording it on my phone. It helped me approach the thing like a correspondent, like I was writing a story about doing this.”
